Half Way to a Billion

It feels like only yesterday when the Rule 5 team, British Cycling and riders from 42 nations congregated at the Lee Valley VeloPark in London for the 2016 UCI Track Cycling World Championships.

The biggest track cycling event of its kind in the modern era, over 52,000 spectators descended upon the capital for five days of action-packed racing to see Great Britain’s track stars, including Sir Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish, Jason Kenny, Owain Doull, Laura Trott and Becky James, compete against the world’s best for the coveted rainbow jerseys and the chance to gain crucial qualification points for Rio 2016.

A team of five worked shifts throughout the week to manage two full service press rooms and produce live social media content on Twitter and Facebook. The social media campaign incorporated engaging video content and photography with new technologies and platforms helping us reach an astonishing global audience approaching half a billion impressions on social channels.

Medal wins from Great Britain’s men’s and women’s team pursuit teams, plus Laura Trott in the omnium, Jon Dibben in the points race and Sir Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish in the Madison on the final day of racing provided electrifying content.

A single image of Sir Bradley Wiggins kissing the forehead of Mark Cavendish after their gold in the Madison event gained 8,887 likes on Instagram, was shared 147 times on Twitter and 233 times on Facebook.

Social coverage was monitored using Facebook Insights and Tweet Binder, which allowed the Twitter statistics to be tracked in real-time. Over 62,000 tweets used the hashtag #TWC2016, reaching 68.9 million people and generating 434,185,086 impacts.

Pre-event, live and post campaign conventional activity saw coverage in all of the UK’s national broadsheets in addition to widespread consumer, cycling and regional media totalling almost 300,000 impressions.